Rules of Working in Retail

Last night I partook in the first phase of my orientation at a retail store that best suits the budget of a college student. No matter which one you guess, I'm sure you'll be on Target. Get it?! HA! Anyway the cookie fun time has just begun. I am convinced that the majority of retail employees have been cheerleaders at one point in their life. Store meetings are just like pep rallies. Both hand out stale tootsie rolls.

Here are some rules of retail.

1. The "R" in retail stands for redundancy.
This fine opperation has a renovation going on. A full frontal renovation. Every single part of the store is being altered. Three different people spoke to us new staff and all had to mention "we are going through a remodeling. If you didn't notice." If I didn't notice? Stevie Wonder could have noticed all the contruction. Hey but I guess my intelligence is a mirror image of my wage, so can you tell me once again what is being remodeled?

2. Sexual Harrassment, bad?!
With all do respect, the video of how not to behave is hard to watch. Fortunately I was not the first to laugh at it. Myself and two other people without the hanger in their shirt found it beyond salvageable. My question is this. If it is not permitted to ask personal questions about coworkers, how do you learn about what interests them? If you only see them at work how can you create an out of work relationship? Prohibiting sexual harrassment in the workplace only breeds stalkers, and we know how that turns out. So please, go ahead and speak your mind. The cold shower is better than the restraining order.

3. Retail has its own language.
Instead of actually just working hard on the task at hand, retail spends countless hours on cute obnoxious names for terms we all accepted. For instance; normal word- customer. retail word- guest. That word is the farthest from the truth. Last time I had a guest over and they wanted a drink I didn't charge them and then give them a ten question suvery on my service. Why is it businesses are afraid to admit they are in business?

4. Hard work yields small dividends.
During the eight reference to the renovation, the girl mentioned that it was 75% complete and the store was going to celebrate the accomplishment (nothing like a premature celebration). She said that for all the hard work, pizza will ordered. DANG! Man I have not had pizza since like, lunch. Now, that I had two pieces of the yummy grease ball called Pizza Hut I will bust my tail for another 40 hours. What? I also get a fun sized Snicker? Aww heck, you are the coolest manager. Hey, do you need your car washed? I can do it on my fifteen minute break.

What I learned last night was that we are all a team. A team that gets treated differently on an individual basis. I also learned that retail is so exciting and comprehensive that orientation had to be split into two nights to prevent the newbies from spontaneously breaking into work. If anywhere in the world, a musical were to randomly occur it would be in a retail store.